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Small note to original poster: Love NAFTA. It's your friend. As long as other countries are poorer than ours and easily accessible, we're going to build things there. Now ask yourself, would you rather economically develop Mexico (lil' brown brother to the south) or China (scary ass authoritarian nation of 1.5 billion). Besides, Wal Mart and China go hand in hand: if Wal Mart were a nation, it'd be a bigger trading partner with China than Russia or the entire UK.
And for all the people talking about society going to hell in a hand basket: no? The long term trend in society is towards less wholesale brutality, not more. Now, before you pitch a fit about the 20th century being the most violent ever, hear me out. Yeah, huge wars, genocide, yada yada yada. The list goes on. But look at Western Europe as an example for the future of the planet. In the past, Europe was as much a religiously fervent, violent, politically unstable place as any part of the the Middle East today. Over time though, they've forgotten past old differences, old rivalries. They've lost the religious fanaticism that launched crusades. They've matured beyond fighting one another. Nothing short of a wholesale breakdown of society is going to change that. If Europe can reach that point, why not the rest of the world? We as civilized people are tolerating wholesale violence less and less as time goes on, and not killing one another is the key to maintaining society.
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